It’s always gratifying when Green MPs get caught misbehaving. They’re so sanctimonious, so judgmental – but turns out they shoplift from boutique stores and throw temper tantrums at florists just like the rest of us. We’re good at judging our politicians for their moral failures – we should be; we get a lot of practice – but we’re bad at holding them to account for their policy failures.
They’re not there to be good people, they’re supposed to govern the country and, sometimes, their failures cause immense damage: squandering enormous sums of money, ruining lives, eroding the social fabric. We’re oddly fine with that, though, so long as they’re not horrible to any waiters while they’re wrecking the nation.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, New Zealand made a number of changes to its primary and secondary education systems: the widespread adoption of a now widely questioned technique called “balanced literacy”; merging teacher training colleges with the universities; shifting the curriculum from knowledge- and skills-based learning – reading, numeracy, writing – to a student centric, “competency-based” model; devolved assessment and open-plan classrooms.
There’s still some debate about which of these policies caused the most damage, but over a 30-year period, our educational outcomes declined. The drop is reflected across genders, ethnicities and deciles. The OECD’s recent biannual report on New Zealand’s economy contained an entire chapter documenting the failures of the education system and their profound economic and social impact. A 4% hit to national productivity – already in decline – and entrenched inequality. Our politicians made us a poorer and more divided nation.
The blame game
Who do we blame? The former ministers are theoretically responsible: Sir Trevor Mallard, Steve Maharey and Chris Carter from the Helen Clark government, Anne Tolley, Hekia Parata and Nikki Kaye from John Key’s. All retired from Parliament with very high standing in political circles (the senior adviser to Mallard and Maharey during the reform period was current Labour leader Chris Hipkins).
They introduced the reforms and bedded them in – but they were following advice from ministry officials. The officials were informed by research from the nation’s academics.
The public-sector unions were enthusiastic supporters. It was an establishment failure and there’s still a deep reluctance among Labour, officials, unions and academics to admit to any fault. Perhaps, they wonder with furrowed brows, neoliberalism, racism and trauma are responsible for the decline?
In its last term, Labour made tentative moves away from the balanced literacy approach to reading. The coalition government has a greater sense of urgency: every year the current failed systems are in place is another year of students with substandard skills. It’s very difficult to compensate for a poor education later in life.
Education Minister Erica Stanford, one of National’s highest-ranked MPs, is trying to circumvent the establishment, taking advice from a smaller pool of experts – some linked to right-wing think tank the New Zealand Initiative – instead of the traditional so-called experts. The Education Ministry itself is facing heavy job losses – 755 staff. Many of its core functions will be contracted out to consulting firms, especially in areas linked to Stanford’s reform programme: rebuilding the curriculum; an emphasis on reading, writing and numeracy; consistent assessment and reporting; better use of data and analysis.
There’s also a focus on improved teacher training. A recent Education Review Office report said 60% of principals believed their new teachers were unprepared to enter a classroom. It urged the sector to adopt stricter entry criteria for training programmes and to conduct exit exams.
The universities rejected the criticism, and the government is now considering expanding private-sector training.
Charting the future
Alongside National’s reform programme sits Act leader David Seymour and his charter schools. If you’re reluctant to send your children to a school that teaches the state curriculum you can homeschool them – the number of homeschooled students on the ministry’s roll has soared in recent years – or pay for a private school, the fees for which often start at $25,000 a year.
Seymour’s charter schools are state funded but empowered to teach their own curriculum, and they’re exempt from many of the Ministry of Education’s regulations – including the cellphone ban imposed by Stanford and Christopher Luxon.
New Zealand is slightly unusual in its lack of charters: schools that are publicly funded but operate independently of the public education system. Teaching unions universally hate them – Act claims this is because the charters can hire unregistered teachers and this will reduce the union’s revenue “and their grip on the sector”.
Seymour has been here before. Act has long made the commercialisation of education a flagship policy. After the 2014 election, he was made parliamentary under-secretary for education. By 2017, the nation had 12 charter schools. They were expensive to establish and didn’t seem to outperform the state system in any detectable way, although their performance was so opaque it was impossible to say for sure. Poor reporting on public expenditure is never a good sign, and represents everything Act should be against.
The charter schools were all abolished when Chris Hipkins became education minister. Seymour’s plan this time around is to go bigger. Last week, he announced $153 million in the upcoming Budget to establish 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state schools. They’ll have fixed-term contracts of 10 years with two rights of renewal. An incoming Labour government will come under enormous pressure from vested interests in the public sector to shut down the charter schools again – but the cost of 50 break fees would be enormous.
If Stanford’s reforms succeed, an incoming left-wing government would face an even greater dilemma. Four institutions Labour considers infallible – academics, public servants, public sector unions, its own caucus – would have been proved wrong. Would they bow to ideology, roll back a functional system and return to the failing model? It’s not impossible. Our recent history suggests that the ministers making such a terrible decision would never face any consequences for it.
